The Shining Path Anthropology

A major event in my interviewee Emigrio Fernandez’s country of Peru, when he was 18 was the rise of the Shining Path. The group was founded in 1970 by a man named Abimael Guzmán. The group wanted to “restore the pure ideology… adopted China’s Cultural Revolution as a model for their own revolutionary movement.” (Britannica). They wanted to start a revolution within Peru using the poor people of Peru. They preached their ideology to the people to rise against the rich and fight. They started to act around 1980 when they engaged in bombing, assassinations and other acts of terrorism. They used these acts of violence to gain control. The Shining Path would preach their ideology mainly on college campuses. Some of the professors were members of

College at that time was a bit different from nowadays but it still has its similarities. You had to study a lot and pull all-nighters like nowadays but there was absolutely no technology at their disposal. They had little to no resources to help them. They had no tutors to help them academically the closes thing they had to tutors was assistant teachers. The assistant teachers were actually students, the best students in each class would be chosen by the teacher to help the other students in the class. There was only about 5 assistants in each class but the usually class size was about 60 students. So it wasn’t easy to get help in the classes but lucky for Emigrio he was one of the best students in his classes and he was an assistant for his mathematics class. They also had little to no financial to help them. The only financial help that existed was from the school and they would only give aid out to the students who did the best in their classes. College there was about 2500 solaces which in US dollars its $762 every 6 months and since there wasn’t really any financial aid your family had to pay for it. In Emigrio’s case his parents were able to pay for everything until he got a job and was able to pay it